Akaroa

Off to Akaroa after OB for a debrief ;) It’s always a lovely place to get away to. The slightly annoying thing was that, pretty much for the rugby world cup, legislation was passed so that you can’t just rock up anywhere in your camper van *unless* it has an installed toilet. Now, my little van doesn’t have one. I’m not sure how much it’s being enforced, and I *can* understand the reasoning… but still… I hate staying in parks like this one… (pretty ‘n all as it is)

I suspect if you’re out in the wilds then you’re very unlikely to be snared.. but I dunno.. it’s just the *fear* of being caught I suppose. Still, the fine is only $200 or something, so if you can get away with a ratio of 5:1 then you’re on the up ;)

Mostly the weekend was about the chatting eating and drinking.. Maaike trying to get accustomed to my attempt at a beard (here to stay for a while I think)

There was swinging too

We also went to see The Tree of Life. It recently won the Cannes Film Festival.. and I must say.. it was total pants. I’m sure it was entirely “clever”, “arty”, “thoughtful”, “deep”, “meaningful” etc. etc. ad nauseam. I’m quite possibly too dense to really “get it”, but I thought that while it was a pretty film with some nice images, the actual plot, storyline, charachters, y’know, something you might enjoy in a 2 hour long film might actually be there. Total rubbish in my opinion…. I’ll leave you with a couple of quips from imdb:

The Tree of Life wilts under the scrutiny of any audience not sitting in a museum or on hallucinogenics.

Basically it had no plot, a vague meaning, and seemed to be consciously attempting to be artsy. I suspect that Cannes critics praised it out of fear that they were the only ones who didn’t understand it, somewhat of a ‘king’s new clothes’ scenario.